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“What’s the problem we’re solving?” Commissioner Mark Samuelian asked. “I’m not aware that we’ve had issues so I’m very reticent, for either of these parts, to do anything that would weaken our Board.”

“I’m also concerned about the talent pool,” he added. By requiring that someone be a current resident in a historic district, “What does that do to the number of applicants you get? We’re looking for very specialized skills here so I’m not yet convinced – though I’ll remain open minded here – but I’m not yet convinced what the problem is and the couple solutions, both parts, give me significant pause and I’m not comfortable with them.”

The city’s efforts have their critics. A citizens group, We Love Lakeview, is protesting a plan to raise roads in their neighborhood, worried about water drainage onto their land and property values. Miami Beach Commissioner Mark Samuelian agrees the city must respond to sea level rise but has concerns about what he calls “our one-size-fits-all policy of every street being raised,” both for the cost and the possible adverse effects on neighborhoods. The city has hired an outside firm to develop a sea level rise mitigation and stormwater strategy that will look at the street-raising policy, but also many other areas, such as ways to improve the aesthetics of a city while managing stormwater.

“Dramatic street raising causes the city problems. It elongates the projects, it causes there to be a lot more cost and complexity and it is losing the trust of the residents,” said Commissioner Mark Samuelian.

Fighting over whether to elevate road or how high to raise them slow down other work that could help residents now, like installing more pumps and clearing drains. One of improvements delayed over the dispute about North Bay Road was repairing area fire hydrants, where the water pressure suffers because of leaky, aging pipes.

Samuelian sees street raising as an answer to tomorrow’s problems, not today’s, and unnecessary in some neighborhoods.

In some cases, he said, elevation could even hurt the neighborhood. Neighbors opposing street elevation consistently cite a loss in their property value as a big concerns. They also worry higher streets will make their front doors will look funny and potentially funnel damaging water into their homes.

“We’re counting on our property base to fund the projects. We had to be very careful about anything we could do that would impact that,” Samuelian said. “I think we need to stop.”

Samuelian and some residents point to the findings of recent expert groups, which advised adopting more natural solutions, like plants, to soak up excess water.

Samuelian acknowledges, “’Do nothing’ is not an option.” He said, “The City has made some important progress over the last few years.” With that learning and the recommendations of outside experts from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and Harvard, Samuelian said, “We’re in a situation where we are going to… ‘reorient’ our resiliency program which, to me, means real change in how we’re doing it.”

“There’s one specific item that jumps off the charts and that is the idea that we have a policy in place to elevate streets to 3.7 NAVD across the City unless hardship is proven, so there is an out clause. That policy, in my opinion, is flawed and we need to change it,” Samuelian said.

“First, putting private property below grade is never a good thing. There are significant downsides and risks to doing that including potentially flooding. Why might you have flooding? It could be an event that’s outside of what was contemplated in the design. It could be a drain that gets clogged or the system may not function exactly as it was designed,” he said, mentioning Sunset Harbour.